There’s been quite a few pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) acquisitions in healthcare recently, including Diplomat Pharmacy’s acquisition of Pharmaceutical Technologies and the CVS/Aetna merger in 2017. At about the same time as Cigna’s purchase, St. Louis-based Centene invested in RxAdvance, a cloud-based pharmacy benefit manager.

Purchases happening in the healthcare industry are unlikely to affect the workers’ compensation industry, experts said.

“I don’t think overall it’s going to be that big of an impact to workers’ comp, as much as it is to the group health world,” said Sherri Hickey, AVP of Medical Management at Safety National and a former employee of Express Scripts, which purchased workers’ compensation pharmacy benefit manager myMatrixx last year.

“Health plans and PBMs are merging to better control care delivery and cost,” Paduda stated. “These merged entities are better positioned to manage all medical care for their members. Work comp is an afterthought at best, as WC drug spend is probably two percent or less than total US spend.”

“Workers’ comp insurers have seen drug costs drop dramatically over the last six years, so there’s no incentive for insurers to come up with a solution when there really isn’t a problem,” Paduda stated.

Mitchell and Corvel already have or lease access to PBMs, said Hickey.

“Workers’ comp has kind of been in that game in the past already,” she said.

Many of the small players have already been consolidated, Hickey added.

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